There are many situations in which it is desirable to be able to give a person the opportunity to create unusual effects by the use of electrical phenomena. A very common instance of such an effect is the creation of sounds by means of key controlled oscillators.
Lately, there has arisen the need to control lighting and other stimuli perceived by sensory organs in shows and discotheques and the like. Along these lines, there have been provided lighting control systems using repetitive and even pseudorandom schemes.
Initially, the results of such equipment have been impressive. However, subsequently, it has been found that there is little or no relation, for example, between the light switching and the beat of the music which is to be matched. In order to remedy this drawback, there have been built touch control systems wherein an operator controls the lighting in response to his feel for the music. Such systems have created a demand for even more versatile systems.
A Broadway show, for example, runs for only about three hours. During a three hour show, a lighting control man may be called upon to make only fifteen hundred different changes, or respond to fifteen hundred different cues at a maximum. With respect to a discotheque lighting man, he will have to work for approximately six to eight hours. During that period, he may have to use as many as ten thousand cues and possibly even more. As a consequence, the sheer weight of memory is beyond what anybody has the experience or capability to deal with even an ongoing musician.
Everything is regarded as a cue. The intensity of light, the particular light selected, how it is changed, how fast it is change, etc. The secret of "disco" jockeying is never to skip a beat and not to break the rhythms and to be able to mix into a record smoothly without changing tempo or, if one does change tempo, to do so with such precise synchronization that he does not break the movement of the people dancing on the floor.
It's important to note that disco jockeying is set up and disco jockeys are qualified by the way they pick records in accordance with what is wanted by the people, who are dancing on the floor. The lighting man who exercises control over the lighting has to follow the disco jockey.
More specifically, he has to follow the disco jockey just like the disco jockey is picking the records. The lighting man has to establish a rhythm and a tone and a feeling for the people who are dancing. Thus, the disco jockey and lighting man operate together in synchronism and in cooperation.
One reason for not necessarily recording a predetermined sequence of cues is that one has to be able to read the audience. One night the audience may be warm whereas on another night, the audience may be cold. The lighting man may have to change his attack. Therefore, the ability to be able to use a manual override is important. Stated otherwise, it is superior not to have a sequence recorded or fixed because the same sequence is not likely to be used from night to night. A record or song may come up at a different time or before a different audience-in which event the audience has got to be read and the music has got to be interpreted in a different way. Consequently, although the idea is to have a lighting response built up and recorded for a beat, the beats might not necessarily follow with the same sequence of interpretation.
Ambience is a characterization to be regarded in connection with disco jockeying and lighting control and the lighting man is an operator to be used in connection with ambience. The lighting man sets the levels of ambience. He is the one who makes the ambience. Ambience can be made much darker and much brighter. One can liven it up or tone it down. It's the lighting man and how he reads the music and the dance crowd, and how he can interpret this, limited by the sophistication of his equipment, all of which gives him flexibility in the course of an evening.
For instance, discotheque club owners are always changing room designs. They interchange their room designs and may emphasize certain areas at one time and deemphasize them at another time, say after a month or so. They keep changing the highlighting and keep moving things around, thereby making the club look like there is always something happening. The lighting man can, for example, make four, five or ten different types of light settings and, then, depending on what the audience is doing on that night, or depending on how everything is going, he can choose one out of ten settings that he has already set up.
There is heavy competition in the discotheque field. Flexibility is the key word. Versatility is what is demanded. How to make something worth over and over again what is paid for it without its getting stale or static is the important thing for all club owners. How to make their places look like they have been redesigned is what interests club owners.
Discotheque club owners do more with the environment than change the lighting. Sometimes, for example, they may change the carpet. Sometimes they may change the seating arrangements or make other basic changes. The club owner has to judge exactly what has become stale in his club. He has to adapt to change because there are always new people coming into his club and there are always new things happening. He has to compete for the entertainment dollar just like the movie theatre owner and television does.
As will be shown hereinafter, the control of the present invention allows the club owner, through the lighting man, to use his equipment over and over again in different combinations so that it looks like it's always different. For instance, by taking a ten-channel chase-track design and running it from one to ten all the time, this makes it look like strictly a from one-to-ten arrangement. However, if all of a sudden, one were to change it and run it as 1,2 then 3,4 then 5,6--then that combination is changed. To the eye, it looks different even though it's the same light source.
The same thing occurs with any sort of ten channel arrangement, whether it's neon, pin beams or just architectual lighting around a room. The minute one starts changing it, either in intensity or in accent or detailing, it looks different to the eye and, hence, it affects people psychologically and makes viewers think there has been change.